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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DIRMINA-1107?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=16840433#comment-16840433
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Emmanuel Lecharny commented on DIRMINA-1107:
--------------------------------------------

Side note: The way encrypted messages are handled is a bit mad. Consider a BIG 
message (say, 1Mb). SSL does not allow messages bigger than roughly 16kb (2^14 
minus header, MAC and padding. Except for M$, of course, which allows up to 
32kb messages...). In any case, we will start with a 16Kb buffer, call encrypt 
again and again until the full source has been read and encrypted, increasing 
the buffer as needed. This buffer will contain *many* TLS {{APPLICATION_DATA}} 
records (starting with {{0x17}}). 

We could perfectly chose to always use a fixed size buffer, and once full, send 
it to the remote peer, avoiding the allocation of a crazy big buffer which will 
be discarded when done. The only problem is that we would need to remember when 
we have fully written the source, inorder to properly send the {{messageSent}} 
event.

> SslHandler flushScheduledEvents race condition, redux
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: DIRMINA-1107
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DIRMINA-1107
>             Project: MINA
>          Issue Type: Bug
>    Affects Versions: 2.1.2
>            Reporter: Guus der Kinderen
>            Priority: Major
>             Fix For: 2.1.3
>
>
> DIRMINA-1019 addresses a race condition in SslHandler, but unintentionally 
> replaces it with another multithreading issue.
> The fix for DIRMINA-1019 introduces a counter that contains the number of 
> events to be processed. A simplified version of the code is included below.
> {code:java}
> private final AtomicInteger scheduledEvents = new AtomicInteger(0);
> void flushScheduledEvents() {
>     scheduledEvents.incrementAndGet();
>     if (sslLock.tryLock()) {            
>         try {
>             do {
>                 while ((event = filterWriteEventQueue.poll()) != null) {
>                     // ...
>                 }
>             
>                 while ((event = messageReceivedEventQueue.poll()) != null){
>                     // ...
>                 }
>             } while (scheduledEvents.decrementAndGet() > 0);
>         } finally {
>             sslLock.unlock();
>         }
>     }
> }{code}
> We have observed occasions where the value of {{scheduledEvents}} becomes a 
> negative value, while at the same time {{filterWriteEventQueue}} go 
> unprocessed.
> We suspect that this issue is triggered by a concurrency issue caused by the 
> first thread decrementing the counter after a second thread incremented it, 
> but before it attempted to acquire the lock.
> This allows the the first thread to empty the queues, decrementing the 
> counter to zero and release the lock, after which the second thread acquires 
> the lock successfully. Now, the second thread processes any elements in 
> {{filterWriteEventQueue}}, and then processes any elements in 
> {{messageReceivedEventQueue}}. If in between these two checks yet another 
> thread adds a new element to {{filterWriteEventQueue}}, this element can go 
> unprocessed (as the second thread does not loop, since the counter is zero or 
> negative, and the third thread can fail to acquire the lock).
> It's a seemingly unlikely scenario, but we are observing the behavior when 
> our systems are under high load.
> We've applied a code change after which this problem is no longer observed. 
> We've removed the counter, and check on the size of the queues instead:
> {code:java}
> void flushScheduledEvents() {
>     if (sslLock.tryLock()) {            
>         try {
>             do {
>                 while ((event = filterWriteEventQueue.poll()) != null) {
>                     // ...
>                 }
>             
>                 while ((event = messageReceivedEventQueue.poll()) != null){
>                     // ...
>                 }
>             } while (!filterWriteEventQueue.isEmpty() || 
> !messageReceivedEventQueue.isEmpty());
>         } finally {
>             sslLock.unlock();
>         }
>     }
> }{code}
> This code change, as illustrated above, does introduce a new potential 
> problem. Theoretically, an event could be added to the queues and 
> {{flushScheduledEvents}} be called returning {{false}} for 
> {{sslLock.tryLock()}}, exactly after another thread just finished the 
> {{while}} loop, but before releasing the lock. This again would cause events 
> to go unprocessed.
> We've not observed this problem in the wild yet, but we're uncomfortable 
> applying this change as-is.



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